Iron crustal abundance

The extraction of metals fundamentally relies on their availability in nature. Three terms are important while one refers to availability. One is the crustal abundance and the other two are the terms resources and reserves. The average crustal abundance of the most abundant metals, aluminum, iron and magnesium, are 8.1%, 5.0% and 2.1% respectively. Among the rare metals titanium is the most abundant, constituting 0.53% of the Earth s crust No metal can be economically extracted from a source in which its concentration is the same... 

Iron was chosen as the reference element because its major source is likely to be soil and it is measured with good accuracy and precision by FIXE. Crustal abundances were taken from Mason (21). Enrichment factors greater than 1 indicate an enrichment of that element relative to crustal abundances values less than 1 indicate a depletion. The results of this calculation are shown in Table 4. For this calculation it was assumed that ammonium and nitrate accounted for all aerosol nitrogen. It is seen that Si and Ca are near their crustal abundance, indicating a probable soil dust source. The low EF for Al is probably due to a systematic error in the Al measurement rather than a true depletion. Potassium, although present in small concentrations, is slightly enriched relative to crust. The other fine aerosol species, C, N, S, and Pb are enriched by factors of thousands over their natural crustal abundance, indicating that they are not due to wind-blown dust. 

When the data for vanadium, nickel, cobalt, copper, and iron in petroleum of the Western Interior Region (15) shown below are divided by the average crustal abundance of these elements, the relation, V>Ni>Co>Cu>Fe is... 

When the relative composition of the biosphere is compared to that of the lithosphere, a new dimension for iron is noted. Iron now constitutes about 1.3 atoms of every 100 atoms of the lithosphere and, on a weight per cent basis, iron in crustal abundance ranks fourth in number, only behind oxygen, silicon, and aluminium (Table 7.3 in Geochemistry, Wedepohl, 1971, p. 60). On a comparative basis, the lithosphere is a dry metallic aluminium silicate, whereas the biosphere is wet and carbonaceous (Deevey, 1970). Iron is very limited in the hydrosphere and atmosphere. 

Fig. 10.5. The graph shows the relation between annual world production of newly-mined metals and their abundance in the continental crust. The dashed line drawn through iron, the most widely used geochemically abundant metal, may be considered a kind of baseline for use rates of metals points lying on the line are produced at the same rate, relative to their crustal abundance, as iron. Metals below the line are mined proportionally slower those above, proportionally faster. Metals farthest from the line — including many of the geochemically scarce metals — will be mined out first.

Phosphorus is the eleventh element in order of abundance in crustal rocks of the earth and it occurs there to the extent of 1120 ppm (cf. H 1520 ppm, Mn 1060 ppm). All its known terrestrial minerals are orthophosphates though the reduced phosphide mineral schrieber-site (Fe,Ni)3P occurs in most iron meteorites. Some 200 crystalline phosphate minerals have been described, but by far the major amount of P occurs in a single mineral family, the apatites, and these are the only ones of industrial importance, the others being rare curiosities. Apatites (p. 523) have the idealized general formula 3Ca3(P04)2.CaX2, that is Caio(P04)6X2, and common members are fluorapatite Ca5(P04)3p, chloroapatite Ca5(P04)3Cl, and hydroxyapatite Ca5(P04)3(0H). In addition, there are vast deposits of amorphous phosphate rock, phosphorite, which approximates in composition to fluoroapatite. " These deposits are widely... 

The nuclei of iron are especially stable, giving it a comparatively high cosmic abundance (Chap. 1, p. 11), and it is thought to be the main constituent of the earth s core (which has a radius of approximately 3500 km, i.e. 2150 miles) as well as being the major component of siderite meteorites. About 0.5% of the lunar soil is now known to be metallic iron and, since on average this soil is 10 m deep, there must be 10 tonnes of iron on the moon s surface. In the earth s crustal rocks (6.2%, i.e. 62000ppm) it is the fourth most abundant element (after oxygen, silicon and aluminium) and the second most abundant metal. It is also widely distributed. 

A critical factor in metal homeostasis is the bioavaUabifity of the specific metal. The bioavailability of a metal can be distinct from the overall abundance of the metal in the environment. For example, iron is the fourth-most abundant element in the Earth s crust. However, in the current-day oxygen-rich atmosphere of Earth, iron is largely present in the ferric (Fe +) form. In aqueous, aerobic environments at neutral or basic pH, ferric iron forms nearly insoluble iron hydroxides. Because of the insolubility of Ee +, iron is one of the least bioavailable of the essential transition metals. The concentration of iron in seawater (3 X 10 ppm) is nine orders of magnitude lower than the crustal concentration (5 x 10 ppm). In contrast, zinc is... 

The abundances in the Earth s crust of both the d-block transition metals and the f-block inner transition metals vary considerably, as shown in Table 1.2. Iron is the most common of the transition metals (6.30% by mass of the crustal rocks) and this reflects the high yield of iron from element synthesis reactions in stellar supernovae. Titanium (0.66%) and manganese (0.11%) are also quite abundant, but some of the heavier... 

Iron is the most abundant transition element in the Earth s crust and, in general, in all life forms. An outline of the distribution of iron in the Earth s crust is shown in Table 1.2. As can be seen, approximately one-third of the Earth s mass is estimated to be iron. Of course, only the Earth s crust is relevant for life forms, but even there it is the most abundant transition element. Its concentration is relatively high in most crustal rocks (lowest in limestone, which is more or less pure calcium carbonate). In the oceans, which constitute 70 percent of the Earth s surface, the concentration of iron is low but increases with depth, since this iron exists as suspended particulate matter rather than as a soluble species. Iron is a limiting factor in plankton growth, and the rich... 

Wet-chemical analyses of aqueous extracts of aerosol samples have established the presence of anions such as sulfate, nitrate, and the halides, and of cations such as ammonium and the ions of the alkali and alkaline earth elements. Table 7-13 shows selected data to illustrate the abundances of important inorganic components in the urban, continental, arctic, and marine aerosols. Included for comparison are the concentrations of silicon, aluminum, and iron, which are the major elements of crustal origin. They occur in oxidized form, such as in aluminosilicates, which are practically insoluble. Taken together, the elements listed in Table 7-13 account for 90% of all inorganic constituents of the atmospheric aerosol. 

Hoffman et al. (1974) found the same procedure applicable to data obtained from measurements on board of ships in the central Atlantic Ocean. Table 7-15 includes mean (X)/(Na) ratios from their work. Shown in parentheses are the values derived from the slopes of regression lines. They are distinctly lower than the averaged data. Hoffman et al. (1974) measured also the abundance of iron in the aerosols. Since the samples were taken in a region partly affected by fallout from the Saharan dust plume, iron serves as a convenient indicator for the contribution of material from continental sources. Not surprisingly, the enrichment of the elements Mg, Ca, K, and Sr was well correlated with the iron content. The (X)/(Na) ratios approached those of sea water only when the Fe concentrations were very low. These results demonstrate that materials from both marine and crustal sources are present over the open ocean. In addition, they provide some verification for the existence of a tropospheric background aerosol having the continents as a source, and they confirm the absence of a significant fractionation of alkali and alkaline earth elements in the production of sea salt. 

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